With the development of computer and network technology, more applications rely on a server to release information at predetermined times. For example, in a “farm” game, a game notification may be sent to the user at a predetermined publishing time. In another example, a birthday notification may be sent to friends at a predetermined time. In a further example, an information message may be sent to users in the whole network at predetermined times. To timedly publish information, saving and pulling of the timedly-published data are required.
Conventionally, the timedly-published data can be stored using a relationship database or a key-value storage system. However, the amount of concurrent requests from users can be large. According to such requests from the users, the server needs to inquire the database, and to append, delete, or update the timedly-published data. In addition, after the server finishes the updating, the server subsequently needs to read corresponding timedly-published data at predetermined publishing times, and then publish. As such, the handling amount of the timedly-published data is very large and time-consuming. Handling efficiency can be reduced. In some cases, the publishing can be delayed and some of the timedly-published data can be lost.
Because the processing timedly-published data is an important aspect of computer technology dealing with online data applications, technical solutions are needed to solve and/or improve the issues associated with the conventional timedly-published data processing methods and systems. Thus, there is a need to overcome these and other problems of the prior art and to provide methods and apparatus for processing timedly-published data.